VLA-A Array AL218 Texas Survey Source Snapshots

The VLA-A Texas Survey consists of a sample of objects which was
extracted in 1989 by Ray Lucas and Kenneth Chambers from the earlier
Texas Interferometer 365 MHz Survey of radio sources covering a strip
of sky from approximately -35.5 degrees declination to +71.5 degrees
declination, and complete to flux densities of 0.25 Jy, with positional
accuracies of ~1 arcsecond in RA and DEC. The Lucas and Chambers sample
from 1989, which comprises the VLA-A Texas Survey is a subset of 71
sources drawn from the area of one optical Schmidt sky survey plate
(covering ~6.5x6.5 degrees), Region S861, centered at approximately
RA=190.640822109, DEC=-0.273834224277 (J2000), from the UK Schmidt SRC-J
Survey. The Region S861 was initially chosen because it represented the
combination of the deepest UK Schmidt plate material (the best optical
survey material available at the time of our sample definition in 1989)
and the highest galactic latitude, thereby emphasizing the extragalactic
nature of the survey and also maximizing the likelihood of having more
optical detections. Much more recently, the area of this plate has been
covered by a number of important sky surveys including 2MASS, NRAO VLA
FIRST, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) which is now public.
In particular, the availability of the Sloan Survey data provides 5-band
ugriz color information at optical wavelengths, to depth of g,r=22.2.

The data were presented as a poster paper at the May 2007 AAS meeting.
The content of that papers is included as the readme file.